city government

Owen Courreges: Can Mayor Landrieu really bring down the General Lee statue?

By |

Few people today recognize just how devastating the Civil War was, especially for the South.  The war resulted in over 750,000 deaths.  The South lost roughly a quarter of its male population of military age — 4 percent of its total population.  It constitutes the largest mortality event in American history. Set against this backdrop, it comes as little surprise that memorials were built throughout the population centers of the South to commemorate the military and political leaders of the Confederacy and the soldiers who served under them.  Though the war was lost, the memories remained. Yet, according to Mayor Landrieu, the days of Civil War Memorials in New Orleans are numbered.  In the wake of the recent mass shooting in Charleston, perpetrated by known Neo-Confederate and white supremacist Dylan Roof, virtually anything associated with the Confederacy is seen as a target. Landrieu has specifically focused on the statute of General Robert E. Lee, the famed commander of the primary military force of the Confederacy, which adorns Lee Circle on the edge of the CBD.  At the end of a ceremony celebrating the one-year anniversary of Welcome Table New Orleans, a racial reconciliation forum, Landrieu explained his reasoning with a highly dubious anecdote:

“I began to envision myself as an African-American man driving down the street with my little girl behind me, approaching Lee Circle,” the mayor said. “And her saying, ‘Hey daddy, that’s a really nice statue, what is that?

court

Owen Courreges: ‘Stand Your Ground’ is no license to kill

By |

One of the chief headaches one gets from monitoring the news cycle relates to the fact that it isn’t self-correcting.  A tiny seed of disinformation grows to become a sturdy tree of conventional wisdom. This is what happened with the so-called “Stand Your Ground” (SYG) laws following the shooting of Treyvon Martin in Florida by George Zimmerman.  Most recently, it was criticized in a recent column by Jarvis DeBerry after being invoked by Algiers Pastor W.L.T. Littleton, who is accused of shooting a fleeing copper thief in the back of the head. “Black people across the country were incensed when, after George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin in Florida, ‘stand your ground’ entered the national consciousness,” DeBerry explained. “Because such laws give gun owners more freedom to fire their weapons, they give black people more reason to be afraid.” DeBerry further opined that Littleton’s appeal to SYG seemed misplaced and “not the smartest strategy to win an acquittal in a predominantly black New Orleans.”

business

Owen Courreges: Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Market and the forced gentrification of Central City

By |

There’s no getting around it: Central City is an impoverished neighborhood. In 2013, Karen Gadbois and Craig Mulcahy summed up the situation in Central City nicely: “[Y]ou’re still within sight of the Superdome, but have no doubt about it: The tracks may be nonexistent, but you’re on the wrong side of them.”

With Central City’s depressed economic state, one would think that public officials and the nonprofit community would focus on promoting businesses that provide goods and services that serve a lower-income demographic. However, the opposite has been the case. Perhaps the best exemplar of the changes that have occurred in Central City is that of the Gator’s Discount Store on Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard (OCH). Founded by Cuban immigrant Gotardo Ortiz in 1989, Gator’s was exactly the type of store that one would expect to see in Central City – a relatively inexpensive source of general merchandise.

city government

Owen Courreges: New Orleans loves its potholes so much that it’s “illegal” to fix them yourself

By |

There’s an old episode of “The Simpsons” where Marge is mugged and the police are useless to catch the perpetrator. Nevertheless, Marge conquers her own fear and anxiety, managing to capture the guy who did it single-handedly. Police Chief Wiggum arrives at the scene and proceeds to lecture the gathering crowd. “She caught her own criminal, unlike the rest of you lazy bones.”

The crowd begins to look down sheepishly. “You’re not gonna find those criminals looking at your feet, people,” Chief Wiggum chastises.

city government

Owen Courreges: Fear and loathing of the New Orleans gutter punk

By |

Privileged, slothful, and ever self-indulgent, the New Orleans “gutter punk” is a creature that inspires near universal disdain. Our city’s new crusade to stop them, however, could wind up threatening us all. Those of us in Uptown are thankfully spared from the infestation of unruly transients that mostly afflicts the Quarter and Marigny, but nevertheless we’ve all seen them at one time or another, begging for change, getting in fights, and making an all-around nuisance of themselves. It’s hard to pin down precisely what makes a gutter punk, but the phrase generally refers to a young, white bum who displays some traits associated with punk subculture. They often panhandle, squat in abandoned buildings, and take on stray dogs (ostensibly as a means of avoiding arrest, since the LASPCA would have to be called out to take custody).

blight and demolition

Owen Courreges: Reform the HDLC before expanding it

By |

If I had to write a motto for the Historic District Landmarks Commission (HDLC), it would be: “Making you kiss the ring to replace your roof.”

There are few examples of useless bureaucratic slime worse than the HDLC. This gaggle of architectural fetishists has crafted a Byzantine set of design guidelines, many of which have nothing whatsoever to do with preservation and appear specifically designed to render any renovation prohibitively expensive. The only saving grace of the HDLC is that their authority is limited to a small number of core neighborhoods. This is kind of like saying that the saving grace of buck moth caterpillars is that they only come out in the Spring – it’s a restraint, but not exactly what I’d call a redeeming quality. Alas, that limitation may be changing.

crime

Owen Courreges: Carnival kudos to the police and meter maids

By |

Mardi Gras is a time for drunken debauchery. Carnival is also a time when our city is most laid bare for the country to see. Our people are judged, our government is judged, and the general quality of our celebration is – as one would expect – judged. This year, I have stared into the maw of the beast that is our Carnival Season and drawn out the following scorecard (thus far):

Law enforcement – Grade: “A.” The NOPD can chalk this up as a banner year relative to Mardi Gras. This may seem counterintuitive because there was a shooting on the parade route in which two people were killed.

city government

Owen Courreges: How to get a New Orleans street named after you

By |

I personally loathe either giving or receiving directions, particularly in New Orleans.  With all the twists and turns in the Crescent City, it’s a sure bet that there’s at least one step where you’ll have to “bear” onto something or venture on some convoluted path to make a left turn, all the while cursing the lack of rhyme and reason to the whole mess. It’s all part and parcel of living in a city established nearly three-hundred years ago along a winding river.  The streets tend to take on a life of their own. Now, sadly, it’s about to become ever more difficult to meander some streets of Uptown New Orleans.  Yes, the City Planning Commission (CPC) has once again exhibited its total lack of purpose, this time by approving needless street name changes borne of local political horse-trading. It happened this past Tuesday.   Two changes came before the CPC: First, being the proposed renaming of a section of Carondelet Street, from Felicity Street to Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, to Robert C. Blakes, Sr. Drive, and secondly,  to rename LaSalle Street between Earhart and Simon Bolivar to Rev. John Raphael Jr. Way. Blakes, who claimed the title of “prophet,” was a Protestant pastor and later bishop in New Orleans from 1965 until his death in 2013.  He was the founder of New Home Ministries at 1616 Carondelet Street, which has churches in New Orleans, Hammond, Baton Rouge, and Houston.  It boasts a combined membership of over 10,000.